


Four College Students, One Tiny Apartment, Christmas Break

by SunsetOfDoom



Category: Brave (2012), How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Rise of the Guardians (2012), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Gen, Merry Christmas, Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 12:02:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2850188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunsetOfDoom/pseuds/SunsetOfDoom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack and Rapunzel just want to watch The Nutcracker like they do every year. Hiccup and Merida are less than thrilled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four College Students, One Tiny Apartment, Christmas Break

**Author's Note:**

> A Christmas present for evil-for-extra-credit.tumblr.com! Hello, I'm the Secret Santa that's been sending you puns for half a month. The Nutcracker versions referenced in this (I switched halfway through because Kevin Kline's voicover annoyed me) were the 1993 New York Ballet version (with Macaulay Culkin as the Prince), and the Mariinsky Theatre Gergiev version; they're both on YouTube. Have I mentioned that I love ballet?

"Why are we watching this?" Hiccup muttered to Merida as she darted around the thin kitchen for chocolate syrup, honey, and cinnamon for the hot cocoa.

She shrugged. "Tradition. If it makes 'em happy, leave 'em be- an' get yer arse _off the counter_." Towel in hand, she advanced, twisting it into a whip-tail, and he jumped off, scurrying out of her range.

"Okay, got it." He held out his hands, weapon-less, and hoped she wouldn't take a whack at him with it. The archery prodigy had a tendency to always hit the most sensitive spots on his arms, usually where he'd already burned himself in the machine shop. "I'm just saying, it doesn't make sense."

"It's a Christmas special, it doesn't have to make sense." She took an orange from the fruit bowl. "Grate this and I won't make you go watch the overture."

He took it, gingerly. "Why do you need orange peel in hot chocolate?"

"Have you ever had it?" She asked.

"No."

"Well, how about you don't bitch until you've tried it."

He grated the peel down to the fruit, rotating it quickly when the juice got all over the cutting board, and pretended not to notice her sneaking the bottle of Bailey's out of the back of the cupboard. Collecting the few tablespoons of shavings into a neat pile, he wandered into the living room to the tune of Merida jamming the tall bottle back into its hiding place.

The enormous TV that Rapunzel had insisted upon showed a small army of children in Edwardian dress, Tchaikovsky's music in the background. (Despite his general disinterest in ballet, Hiccup’s memory clung to the names of the composers.)

Rapunzel was curled up almost exactly like a small cat in the armchair, her head resting on the arm and her long hair draped over the rest of her- Rapunzel rarely bothered with blankets. Jack was sprawled over the leather couch, an old felt tie-blanket on top of the cushions and underneath his belly, his neck turned at a painful-looking right angle to watch the show. Both of them were spellbound.

"Why is this interesting?" Hiccup wondered aloud. "I mean, they're dancing, kind of, but it's just a bunch of kids opening presents. It's like sitting in on Christmas Morning with relatives you don't know."

Rapunzel narrowed her eyes at him. "The music is pretty. Now _shhh_."

Kicking Merida's gaming chair out of the way, he perched on the end of the couch, nudging Jack's splayed feet closer together behind him.

As Hiccup was about ready to go start his English essay just so he wouldn't have to see another rosy-cheeked eight-year-old do a clumsy spin, Merida emerged from the kitchen. The old tray she'd lifted from her mother's house was balanced carefully, one mug in each corner, and they were all piled with whipped cream.

They each had their own mug, mostly to keep them from fighting over coffee in the mornings; Hiccup's with a dragon, Jack's a winter storm with detailed snowflakes, a pattern of suns, moons, and stars for Rapunzel. Merida set her own, emblazoned with the slogan "ARCHERS HIT THE SPOT", on the end table by Hiccup's end of the couch, and passed his mug to its owner by its scaly-tailed handle. 

Rapunzel sat up when she took hers, but Jack just grunted when she waved the cream under his nose, so she balanced it carefully between two vertebrae on his lower back.

For the first time in probably twenty minutes, his head moved. With great care, he took a breath in- his shoulders moving instead of his stomach- and raised himself half an inch off the pillow to say only, “Get it off.”

Hiccup took it before Merida’s passive-aggressive sense of humor got the couch ruined, and kept it in hand until Jack flipped over, sat up against the arm of the couch, and took it himself.

Jack made a grab for the blanket just as Hiccup took hold of an end; they played careful tug-of-war with the fleece, but when Jack slid a cold foot up Hiccup's warm pant leg, it shocked him into letting go. Jack pulled his freezing toes underneath the blanket with a smug smile.

Hiccup eyed him. "You know, after I get that new job, I won't need three roommates to make rent anymore..."

Jack grinned, his teeth glinting in the lamplight. "You wouldn't know what to do without us."

Onscreen, the Christmas tree grew larger and larger, magic happening to sweet Clara in the grand house.

"Rapunzel could go on back to Delta Regia." Merida suggested, settled on her ground-level gaming chair at their feet. "They liked her better than me."

Rapunzel shook her head. "Nah, I've been replaced. Everybody's all over those new Norwegian girls."

Merida began to laugh, but stopped when the movement spilled her drink. "Ah, they'd like you fine if you were there more."

The other girl hummed to herself, caught up in the sword fight between the rats and the toy soldiers, while Hiccup and Jack's unsubtle foot-dueling finally caught Merida's attention.

“Quit it!” She snapped. One giant gulp of hot chocolate later- to get it below the rim of the mug- and she was flinging herself on top of both their legs, making herself comfortable while they squawked. Hiccup went still, protecting his cocoa like a mother bird with her eggs, but Jack kicked her in the leg; and for his troubles she laid herself out across him, deliberately getting her elbows into inconvenient places. 

He grumbled and whined, getting Merida, in her infinite contrariness, to spread out atop him like Scot-shaped blanket. Her hair draped over his shoulders, her head on his belly, and her elbows, having settled after poking his delicate underbelly, were tucked between his hips and the couch. 

Content with his discomfort if it meant sharing body heat, Jack stopped fighting her. They watched as the bedroom and grand hall onscreen transitioned to tall pines and soft snow.

Hiccup turned, bored already.

“Snow.” He said, almost surprised.

“Mm-hmm.” Rapunzel sighed. “The Snowflakes are my favourite part.”

“No,” he said, a little louder. “I mean, snow. As in, it’s snowing.”

They all turned at his word; sure enough, the window showed thick white flakes drifting on the wind, swirling in a dance not unlike the one on the screen. They floated gracefully in the darkness, illuminated by the streetlamps below. 

Rapunzel rose, slowly, as if trying not to startle her sleepy friends. The couch was close to, but not blocking, the window, and she climbed up, draping herself across the back like a cat to stare outside.

With a helpless, anxious hatred gnawing at his gut, Hiccup remembered that the house Rapunzel had been sequestered in for eighteen years had been miles and miles to the south; she had never seen snow, besides the aftereffects of midnight January blizzards the dry year before. He wrapped a hand around her ankle, rubbing circles around the protruding bone, trying not to feel sick at the ligature scarring he could feel there. She’d told them the bare bones when applying for roommates, but as friends, they had heard the stories; more than that, they had held her through her nightmares.

All of a sudden he couldn’t stand being cold a second longer; he swung his legs from the couch, triggering an unhappy groan from Jack and Merida, whose feet were tangled with his. He balanced three quilts from the hall closet on his arms, and dumped them back on the couch. The other two looked up with sleepy eyes, and he nodded at Rapunzel, blank-eyed, her hands draping behind the couch as she stared and stared. 

Merida sighed. She took a quilt- kneeing Jack in the process- and hefted it above her head to unfold it, as Hiccup did the same on the other side. They got it on top of Rapunzel while Jack kicked the folds out of the other two until they were shapeless balls of fabric, which together they managed to pull over themselves as they settled again; this time with Jack sitting up in the middle, leaning on Hiccup, as Merida perched on the arm to rub Rapunzel’s shoulders. She talked soft and low while she did it; _dear_ and _lassie_ featured heavily in her speech. 

Hiccup sunk into the couch cushions and tried not to worry; Jack, as was his way, tickled Rapunzel’s feet gently; and when that didn’t work, he got an arm around Hiccup and focused on the dancing.

All through Clara’s pas-de-deux with the Prince, Merida talked. Half-asleep, Hiccup gave up on listening.

He drifted into a sort of dream, and it was only when Clara and her Nutcracker were growing wings to fly away together when something shifted behind him; reality righted itself as he realized that Rapunzel was sliding down the couch, about to land with her head in Merida’s lap and her everything else in his and Jack’s. He took a leg, Jack got a hold on her waist, and they got their sleeping friend onto the couch with them, and away from her memories.

“Hot chocolate.” Merida muttered, a smile on her face as she combed her fingers through the beginnings of Rapunzel’s hair- the rest of which had ended up behind the couch.

Hiccup looked at her oddly. 

She nodded at the screen. “That’s what the dance is called.”

Hiccup nearly rolled his eyes, but didn’t. The side table was full of empty hot cocoa mugs, and at some point either Jack or Merida had turned off all the lights but the Christmas tree. Jack was snoring quietly onto his shoulder, Rapunzel’s knees drawn up to Hiccup’s stomach with her torso on Jack’s lap, and her head rested on Merida’s folded knees. They were covered in three blankets, safe and warm.

He fell asleep during the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy, and dreamed of dancers who leapt so high they flew.

 

He woke up, later, to the laughter of a late-night talk show, and fumbled for the remote on the side table. The first time, he caught his phone instead, and, though nearly blinded by turning it on, noticed something.

“Hey,” he whispered into the new darkness as he found the power button, “anyone awake?”

“Mmmm.” Rapunzel hummed. She nudged him gently with one toe. “What?”

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.” She whispered back.


End file.
